Deeplinks Blog posts about DRM

Last month, EFF and I scored a major victory for video game archiving, preservation and play – we got an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act for some archival activities related to video games.

Before I throw a bunch of shade, I want to emphasize that the exemption is a victory for the video game archiving community. Although there were flaws in what the Library of Congress granted, more legal leeway in this space is a net positive.

If you have ever tried scanning or photocopying a banknote, you may have found that your software—such as Adobe Photoshop, or the embedded software in the photocopier—refused to let you do so. That's because your software is secretly looking for security features such as EURion dots in the documents that you scan, and is hard-coded to refuse to let you make a copy if it finds them, even if your copy would have been for a lawful purpose.

EFF will go to bat for users' rights at this month's hearings on exemptions to Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Section 1201's overreaching restriction on circumventing "access control" or "digital rights management" (DRM) technologies comes in direct conflict with lawful activities like conducting security research, repairing cars, and resuscitating old video games. For that reason, Congress included a provision allowing the public to petition the Copyright Office and Librarian of Congress for exemptions to the 1201 clause. It is a long, complex process that happens every three years with no guarantee that previous exemptions will stand, so EFF is back on the ground to advocate for several important issues.

In past years, EFF successfully petitioned for the right to jailbreak your phone and use DVD video for fair use remixes. In the 2015 petitions, we are working to uphold these uses and more. Here is what we are focusing on:

It’s International Day Against DRM, which means folks around the world bring attention to the dangers of the so-called “technical protection measures” embedded in their stuff.But DRM (which stands for Digital Rights Management) isn’t the whole problem; equally pernicious are the laws that prevent folks from circumventing the DRM in order to do otherwise perfectly legal things.

For example: perhaps you want to get your car in shape for that summer road trip. Maybe you’re looking forward to a summer project where you make a fan video.Or perhaps you are organizing a reunion with friends that will include a gaming night, and you’d like to dig up some of the old games you used to play in high school.